NORTHAMPTON — A jury heard closing arguments Tuesday in the trial for a Springfield man accused of a raping a 15-year-old girl when she was living at a residential treatment facility in Northampton almost seven years ago.
Alphonso Cintron, who turned 35 Monday, is a former night supervisor at the Grove, a Northeast Center for Youth and Families residential treatment program that closed in 2012.
Cintron’s accuser, now 22, previously testified in Hampshire Superior Court that the man asked her multiple times, on two separate days, to perform oral sex on him. On the night of the alleged rape, sometime in the summer of 2009, he requested the sexual act at least three times in exchange for cigarettes, according to her testimony.
She complied the final time he asked, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Caleb Weiner contends.
Cintron has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aggravated rape of a child as well as a charge alleging that he failed to report the abuse of a child after he learned the same 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by another overnight supervisor, Fabian Williams, also of Springfield, according to the Northwestern district attorney’s office. Cintron remains held on $50,000 bail.
Williams, who is being tried separately, previously pleaded not guilty to rape and two counts of aggravated rape of a child. These charges involve at least two alleged victims, one of them being Cintron’s accuser, according to the district attorney’s office.
The alleged victim’s roommate at the Grove, Michela Calabrese, 21, testified earlier that the girl had a consensual, continuing sexual relationship with Williams. Calabrese also testified that her roommate did not disclose to her that she was forced to perform sex acts on Cintron.
In her closing arguments on Tuesday, Cintron’s attorney Tracy E. Duncan, of Springfield, said the outcome of the trial rested entirely on the jury’s perception of the alleged victim’s credibility.
“When you take a look at whether to believe her, I ask you to take a look at all the evidence,” Duncan told the jurors. “Not only what she has told you, but any inconsistencies …”
Duncan spent a large portion of her closing argument trying to pick apart the alleged victim’s account of the first time she said she was sexually assaulted by Williams. Although the incident does not directly involve Cintron, Duncan told the jury it is relevant because of the sparseness of the account.
“She didn’t describe any detail what happened,” Duncan said. “She just said she was raped.”
Cintron allegedly forced the girl to perform oral sex on him just two or three weeks later, prosecutors allege. The girl first reported the incidents in December that year, according to previous testimony from former Grove staffers.
Before that, the Grove initiated an internal investigation after another resident lodged a complaint that the accuser and Cintron violated protocol when they stayed up past curfew one evening together and watched television, Duncan said.
During the investigation, there was no mention of any alleged sexual assaults, Duncan said, and the internal review concluded that the claim about the two staying up and spending time watching TV together was unfounded.
“That would’ve been a prime opportunity for this to come out,” Duncan said. “But it didn’t come out because it never happened.”
In his closing arguments, Weiner said whether the girl was forced to perform the sexual act was not relevant.
“That’s unlawful sexual intercourse,” he told the jury. “She described that event to you. She described it in detail.”
Because of the girl’s age at the time there is no legal means for the sex to have taken place, Weiner said. “Whether or not it involved force, it was rape of a child,” he said.
The jury began deliberating Tuesday afternoon after receiving instructions from Judge Mary-Lou Rup and is scheduled to continue at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.